Should Anthropic trust Elon Musk to host its models? After users on X hinted that Musk could wake up one day and simply launch the AI lab from SpaceX’s servers as a way to bring a rival to his knees, Musk he answered with glowing praise for the AI lab. He said such a stunt was “not my style”.
“I was clearly wrong about Anthropic,” Musk wrote on Thursday, referring to September 2025 posting on X in which he said, “Winning was never in the range of possible outcomes for Anthropic.” Of course, even at that time, Anthropic could already be considered a winner. the company was reported to have the largest AI market share with enterprises.
It looks like those anti-Anthropic days are behind Musk — and not just at X. As of July 2026, Anthropic is one of SpaceX’s biggest customers.
To recap: Anthropic signed a deal in May to buy 300 megawatts of computing, the entire output of xAI’s Colossus 1 data center near Memphis, Tennessee. (Musk’s xAI merged with SpaceX in February.) Anthropic agreed to pay $1.25 billion a month through May 2029, a deal worth about $40 billion in revenue for SpaceX’s xAI unit. Google, by the way, also signed an agreement to rent SpaceX infrastructure until June 2029, for $ 920 million per month.
Musk insists that this was not a risky decision by Anthropic and that he is full of admiration for the rival.
“They are clearly the leader in AI. No company has released a model as good as Mythos/Fable and no doubt they will have Mythos 2 ready soon. And I would never cut them in a way that would hurt them too much, even as a competitor. That’s not my style,” he wrote.
He offered as evidence of Tesla’s 2014 decision to not push its competitors (described in a now-deleted company blog post and now housed under patent encumbrance) not to file patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use its technology. He also noted that Tesla has opened up its Supercharger network and charging port design to competitors.
“SpaceX launches competitive satellite systems without increasing price or using unfair terms. Even my worst enemies can attack me on this platform,” he wrote, citing another example.
Of course, Musk isn’t exactly above tactics aimed at rivals, especially those with whom he has a history. Sue OpenAI, for example.
However, Anthropic doesn’t have to rely on Musk sticking to his “style.” There would certainly be contractual ramifications if Musk were to suddenly shut down Anthropic’s infrastructure. Not to mention the huge benefits for SpaceX to keep this deal intact. Not only does Anthropic pay handsomely, but SpaceX engineers can learn how to build and support Anthropic’s rapidly developing artificial intelligence, just like Amazon engineers do.
This proximity can have other benefits. During his lawsuit against OpenAI, Musk acknowledged that AI “distillation” was real — a process in which a model maker creates multiple fake accounts to message a competitor in order to learn how it works. Like the New York Times was mentionedwhen a lawyer asked him if xAI had ever distilled technology from OpenAI, Musk replied: “Generally AI companies distill other AI companies.”
Anthropic in February accused three Chinese model makers to do this to Claude. Apparently, Anthropic and Google believe they have safeguards against SpaceX doing this while using its infrastructure. However, hosting Anthropic’s computing could give SpaceX more visibility into how the company operates than most competitors would ever have.
There seems to be nothing but positives for Musk’s company in this partnership right now. As for tomorrow, and as the three-year contract ages, who knows?
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